Europe 2015 Diary Entry IX – Switzerland

OneTwo years later, I’m finally finding the time to document my memories of our trip. I’m calling them diary entries, because they’re mostly thought dumps to recall as many details as possible – mostly for memory sake. I’m already forgetting little details about our trip, which is sad as it was really a once in a lifetime experience that I want to remember for the rest of my life. So these posts will be long and full of pictures. Consider yourself warned. 🙂

After hopping around from city to city for a few months, I started to feel unsettled and found myself wanting to stay put for a while to catch my breath. Having Granichen as our “home base” was perfect, because it gave me a sense of stability for the majority of the time we spent in Europe.

I already wrote about our time in Granichen, so I’ll talk about a few of the other Swiss cities (Locarno, Basel, Olten, Lenzburg) that we managed to visit.

Locarno
This is one of the prettiest Swiss cities I’ve been to, and it was my most memorable day trip. We left Granichen late one morning and arrived in Locarno a few hours later. The train ride itself is stunning, and we were able to explore Locarno under clear, sunny weather.

In our typical travel style, we packed lunches to eat on the train and saved our money to spend on coffee and pastries instead.

Eating sandwiches with homemade bread (or fresh bread from our local Swiss-German bakery) while riding trains to different places is one of my happiest memories.

Locarno is on the Italian side of Switzerland, so everybody says Ciao! instead of Grütze! and the Italian influence is everywhere. It’s amazing.

Despite their good looks, swans never hesitate to hiss at you if you get too close to them.Not long after we took this photo, we went to a nearby shop and bought a Toblerone. It seemed fitting.

Like Lucerne (another stunning city that we’ve visited in the past), Locarno is incredibly gorgeous and scenic. It’s like stepping into a postcard. As pretty as it is, I’m not exactly sure what more you can do there other than gawk at the pretty mountains and shop if you have excess amounts of money to spend.

We sat on a bench and stared at the mountains in the background for what felt like hours. In reality, it was probably more like 30 minutes and then we were done. I couldn’t see myself coming back here to stay for more than a day unless I had a local showing me around, or a specific event to attend (like a race, maybe?).

Basel
To keep our solo long runs interesting, Mike and I would often choose a nearby city to run and finish our long runs at. Once we had both finished (often Mike would be done long before me), we’d meet at a cafe to enjoy a post-run coffee and pastry before taking the train home. It was the perfect way to knock out a long run without getting bored since Granichen itself is really small, and there are only so many kms you can cover before you start running in circles.

Basel

One Sunday, we each spent 35km slowly making our way to Basel. The run itself was interesting as I got to run through a lot of very rural areas of Switzerland that I would have never seen. We also managed to run an errand by purchasing Eurail passes for our upcoming trip to Germany (not all train stations sell Eurail passes and unfortunately, you must buy them in person if you want to use them right away and can’t wait for them to be mailed).

Scenes from a long run.

We also went there once to check out a Fasnacht winter carnival. I wrote more about it in this post, but it was really interesting to witness something that the entire city shuts down for (even schools are closed so children can attend) and enjoy. I can’t think of anything in Canada, not even Canada Day, that results in this type of attendance.

Even on a grey, rainy day, people came out for the festival.

Olten
I can’t remember why we went to Olten. Maybe because it was one of the closest cities to visit by train? The city had its usual pretty views, but we struggled to find things to do. Most of the cafes we visited didn’t have wifi which was a problem for Mike who was still working remotely. And – as usual, everything was pricey. At one cafe we went to, 2 cappuccinos and 2 waters set us back 20CHF (~$26CAD).

Apart from a cupcake and a coffee, we didn’t get much accomplished here. We couldn’t even find one cafe that had wifi for us to use.

Lenzburg
This was a REALLY fun and random city that we ran to as part of a long run. When we were planning that particular long run, our friend Maja drew us an old school map to give us an idea of where to go.

A basic map of our route. It’s really all that we needed since the majority of it was around the lake.

That particular long run also involved running through various types of terrain (and weather; it rained on and off), a forest, and up a very rude hill during the last 2km. As always, we set our meeting point at a cafe in Lenzburg – a very old, historic city that I would have loved to explore but not much is open on Sundays in Switzerland. I seriously love how much history is buried all over Europe. Maja was kind enough to meet us at the cafe and drive us home after a quick post-run cappuccino. When we got back to her place, she made us an amazing Swiss version of French toast for brunch that we still eat on a regular basis today. It was SO GOOD!

Lenzburg, where we met a friend for a coffee after finishing a very long, challenging and hilly long run.

Bottom line
I absolutely loved exploring and running through Switzerland. I know it’s unrealistic to spend hours running to a different city and commuting back home, so I didn’t allow myself to take any run for granted. Every Sunday was a blank slate to create our own adventure and I am so grateful that my body stayed strong enough to carry me through all of those amazing, scenic long runs.

I say this all the time, but I would go back and live there in a heartbeat.